Human rights prosecutions have been the major policy innovation of
the late twentieth century designed to address human rights violations.
The main justification for such prosecutions is that sanctions are necessary
to deter future violations. In this article, we use our new data set
on domestic and international human rights prosecutions in 100 transitional
countries to explore whether prosecuting human rights violations
can decrease repression. We find that human rights prosecutions after
transition lead to improvements in human rights protection, and that
human rights prosecutions have a deterrence impact beyond the confines
of the single country. We also explore the mechanisms through
which prosecutions lead to improvements in human rights. We argue
that impact of prosecutions is the result of both normative pressures
and material punishment and provide support for this argument with a
comparison of the impact of prosecutions and truth commissions, which
do not involve material punishment.

Copyright 2010 International Studies Association. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. The definitive version is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/